Then he put on his hat, nodded to her, and walked out of the door as though averse to any further discussion of the subject. "Bums all over the country!" repeated Mrs. Huzzard, looking after him darkly. "Well, Mr. Dan Overton, it's well for you that ward of yours, as you call her, wasn't near enough to hear that speech. And you're not a marrying man, are you? Well, well, I guess there's many a man and woman, too, goes through life and don't know what they might be, just because they never meet with the right person who could help them to learn, and you're just of that sort. Not a marrying man! Humph! When there's not a better favored one along this valley--that there ain't." She fidgeted about the dinner preparations, filled with a puzzled impatience as to why Dan Overton should thus decidedly state that he was not one of the men to marry, though all the rest of the world might fall into the popular habit if they chose. "It's the natural ambition of creation," she declared in confidence to the dried peach-pie she was slipping from the oven. "Of course, being as I'm a widow myself, I can't just make that statement to men folks promiscuous like. But it's true, and every man ought to know it's true, and why Dan Overton--" She paused in the midst of her soliloquy, and dropped into the nearest chair, while a light of comprehension illuminated her broad face. "To think it never came in my mind before," she ejaculated. "That's it! Poor boy! he's had a girl somewhere and she's died, I suppose, or married some other fellow; and that's why he's a bachelor at nearly thirty, I guess," she added, thoughtfully. "She must have died, and that's why he never looks as gay or goes on larks with the other boys. He just goes on a lone trail mostly, Dan does. Even his own stepfather don't seem to have much knowledge about him. Well, well! I always did feel that he had some sort of trouble lookin' out of them dark eyes of his, and his words to-day makes it plain to me all at once. Well, well!" The pensive expression of her face, as it rested on her fat hand, was evidence that Lorena Jane Huzzard had, after all, found a romance in real life suited to her fancy, and the unconscious hero was Dan Overton. Poor Dan! The grieving hero to whom her thoughts went out was at that moment walking in a most prosaic, lazy fashion down the main thoroughfare of the settlement. The road led down to the Ferry from seemingly nowhere in particular, for from the Ferry on both sides of the river the road dwindled into mere trails that slipped away into the wildernesses--trails traveled by few of the white race until a few short years ago, and then only by the most daring of hunters, or the most persevering of the gold-seekers.